Jerry Young monitors a machine that makes circuit boards at A Squared
Technologies, a contract manufacturer in San Marcos. CHARLIE NEUMAN • U-T

In a small industrial building near the Crossings shopping center in Carlsbad, a hundred factory workers at Outsource Manufacturing Inc. are producing and assembling medical devices, consumer gadgets and parts and supplies for other manufacturers.

Over the past couple of decades, much of this type of work has been shipped out of the country, to factories in places like Mexico, China, Vietnam or Thailand. But recently, manufacturers have been bringing some work back to America. They call it “insourcing,” rather than outsourcing to foreign lands. Or “reshoring,” rather than offshoring.

“Reshoring is happening,” said Ted Fogliani, who heads the firm. “When you look at the full cost of doing business abroad, U.S. factories can compete on price, delivery and quality. People would be surprised to learn how many things we still manufacture in the U.S.”

In recent weeks, the idea of insourcing has been in the spotlight, with President Obama touting it as a way of creating jobs in the United States. “It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America,” he said last month, unveiling a package of tax incentives that he hoped would turn the tide.

Many companies have already brought production lines back from foreign lands, breathing new life into long-ailing U.S. factories.

Coleman Co., for instance, has shifted its production of plastic coolers from China to Kansas because of rising labor costs. Outdoor GreatRoom brought its production of fire pits and pergolas back to Minnesota because of the lag time in getting shipments from China. Peerless Industries is moving its audio-visual mounting systems from China back to Illinois, so it can have more control over the manufacturing.

A study by the Boston Consulting Group last summer projected that the trend will increase over the next several years, eventually generating between 2 million and 3 million jobs nationwide, including service jobs that support the factories.

The upper end of that estimate represents about half the factory jobs that have been lost since manufacturing peaked in 1999. Chula Vista electronics manufacturer and business advocate Michele Nash-Hoff, who has written extensively on manufacturing policy, said she thinks factories could regain 25 percent to 30 percent of the jobs that they lost nationwide and maybe 10 percent to 15 percent in San Diego County, amounting to roughly 3,000 to 4,500 workers.

What it means to San Diego

Nash-Hoff sees lower growth in San Diego because so many local factory jobs have been “near-sourced” to Tijuana, where they are likely to stay. But she says that there’s already increasing demand for local factory workers, to the extent that some factories are finding it hard to fill openings requiring specific skills.

“We need to institute more apprenticeship programs to address that problem,” she said.

Skeptics say that despite the recent insourcing, many U.S. firms will keep producing their goods abroad. Last year, imports of manufactured goods from China increased by $30 billion, including many goods produced by the offshore factories of such U.S. companies as Disney, Motorola and Apple.